Dear shit filled, shit-eating, shit heads from shitsville,
Stop.
Fucking.
With.
Me.
You know who you are, and you know what you did. What you do. What you always do to those who try to make their way in this world the way their randomly appointed, mandatory public guardians at their geographically specific, government funded, learning institutions always wanted them to. Mrs. Whats-her-face from 3rd period English would be spinning in her "took her whole pension to pay for it and her grandkids still had to shell out for the flowers" coffin if she saw such efforts by her students rewarded with nothing but spit in their faces.
She would spin because she was naive. Because she believed we were all individuals, capable of making individual decisions and contributing individual achievement to the world. She saw each child's face and thought she was looking into a microcosm of the American people. She saw what she needed to see to do her job. To make her individual contribution to the world.
But that's not how it works. The people that lift the rocks are eventually crushed to death, and the people that dig the holes eventually trip and break their neck after falling 20 feet. What we do to pay the bills eventually punches our ticket. No contribution. No individuality. One day you clock out and you don't clock back in and they erase your employee number off the ledger.
I know this because lately, for years now, I've noticed a pattern. I keep getting fucked over, and, I didn't use to get fucked over. I didn't really use to do anything. I didn't get crushed until I started lifting rocks, you see?
At least, that's what I thought. As it turns out I don't really believe I'm being crushed by the rocks I lift. I think it's a lot more sinister than that. I think all that crushing weight is the mile high stack of the collective fat asses that want to benefit from my lifting.
Asses belonging to guys that say things like "zero sum game" or that their in the "people business." You know who else was in the people business? Pharaohs.
Those giant geometric tombs aren't going to build themselves, right?
And it's not just asses. It's also the stomachs of these lazy bastards. Stomachs filled with the remains of every decent person they chewed into a paste out of pure gluttony, and those people, already crushed and eaten, are rotting away inside the belly of the beast. Only adding stress to my shoulders.
You can see these poor chewed up bastards everywhere you go. Their diners have given them cute little names like "chief sandwich artist" or "dry clean specialist manager" or "head of topping technology", and they've been put in slight positions of authority, maybe to give them some glimmer of hope that one day they could eat someone of their very own. They sit and they push their zombied existence forward in hopes of success, like a dog sitting at the dinner table, thinking it's people, and waiting for the pot roast that everyone else got.
Well, I don't think I'm people.
I mean, if were a dog I wouldn't … it's not that I think I'm a dog it's just that, for the metaphor, I needed a bold-you know what? Fuck you, you know what I mean.
Look, I'm just tired of getting shit on. I show up to work on time, I feign as much interest as I can in what I'm doing. What else do you want from me? What else do you really expect you'll get, would be a better question.
People don't like to work. People like to eat and be warm and watch movies, so they work. In the beginning if people had the option of eating and staying warm and getting some joy from day to day that required absolutely no effort on their part, they'd do that.
They'd all do that.
But not now. Now you, that fat asses with the full stomachs, have gotten everyone so trained to blindly toil away at nothing, that it is socially unacceptable to WANT to loaf. I'm not even talking about loafers. I'm talking people that honestly wish they could just lay around all day and get taken care of like a child.
You've created this delightful grinder of self loathing where I am embarrassed to tell some people about the job I have to earn money, because it's dead end and pointless and makes me miserable. But at the same time, I'm embarrassed to tell other people about my dreams and wishes because those dreams are lazy and self indulgent and beg for attention.
We don't have to be worker bees. We don't have to spend all day gathering all that fucking pollen to bring it back to our shit-hole hive and make all this goddamn honey every miserable bitch of a day.
We can give up our lives in the hive, and join the monkeys in the trees; at least, mentally. Have you ever seen a monkey that didn't have a problem with arbitrary authority? I haven't. But, do you see monkeys totally on board with being given tasks that are fun first and productive as a by product? Fuck yeah, they love that shit.
I've watched a monkey drive a car. He wasn't going to a job interview or racing to a big meeting with his investors, he just thought it was awesome. To him, the fact that he can go from point A to point B is secondary to "awesome." Do you see where I'm going?
This philosophy of the "working man" is all in our heads. There's nothing inherently noble about wasting away at a lever for 40 years. Nobility comes from community creation, and sharing ideas, and working together on the things that we find interesting and fulfilling. I don't find answering the phone fulfilling. I do find blurting out all my opinions to anyone that will listen fulfilling.
Guess which one I can buy food with.
Don't you think that's just a little bit fucked up?
My dad is a working man, and he's miserable. He might not say he's miserable, and he might not even know he's miserable, but the few times I've actually been able to spend time with him it's been obvious. The joy has been sucked out of his body and replaced with some hollow sense of responsibility.
And I can feel the same thing happening to me. I'm being cored out like a Thanksgiving turkey and stuffed back full with a bunch of crap about pulling my weight and being part of a team, like I owe it to somebody to reach for the glass ceiling.
Well fuck the team. Fuck the responsibility and fuck you. I'm doing what I'm contractually obligated to do so I can get money so I can pay bills, and, if you fire me, I'm just going to go somewhere else to do what I'm contractually obligated to do, to get money, to pay bills. If you have a problem with me thinking that everything I work for is useless shit then hire yourself a robot because guess what, I don't care what happens to your product. I don't care what happens to your business reputation. I don't give a damn about you or anyone else up here, and if anyone says they do, they are brainwashed and a moron, and they get what they deserve.
You say you're going to pay me, so I show up and I do stuff you'd like me to do, but I'm not wasting my good feelings on this place. I'm saving them for all those hopes and dreams you've made me too afraid to even voice out loud for fear of retribution from the "workin' folk."
I can't change where I live and I can't change where I work right now, but, that doesn't mean I have to keep changing myself to fit in where I am just because my mentality doesn't mesh with what I'm doing. I'm done with pretending to give a crap.
I don't give a crap, and neither should anybody else if their day to day has no meaning to the whatsoever. It's OK to not care about things you don't care about, everybody.
I only hope that the parts of me that have already been scooped out, haven't been dead too long to put back in.
Sincerely,
Chiggie Von Richthofen
Wishing he was a free loading mooch, because, who doesn't?
Monday, October 20, 2008
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
A Letter to The Fog Concerning The Fog
Dear people I can only guess are still there,
I want you to know that we can all still see, and I being part of we, can also still see. But, I can't still see you. I can't see you because I can't know you because I don't understand you. And since we see to know and knowing is the beginning of understanding, I can't see you.
You are sight unseen and I am seer unsighted and that is something that I cannot stand to stand.
And, that is why I want to give you a gift. You and all the people I have trouble seeing. I wish to make my own world clearer to me by letting those not seen see what I see, and know that trying to know them is like knowing an unknowable.
Like knowing a flame.
You can remember a flame. You can recognize a flame. You can detect a flame. But you can no more know a flame than you can know the past or a god. Just as it is with them whose actions make them detectable in my life and nothing more. And, it is the unknown to what I wish to give the gift of my clarity.
But, how do you give a gift to something that you're not even sure is there? You can't. Giving is from one to another and since I am just one I have to leave, instead of give.
I will take my clarity, a piece of it that I can spare, and I will leave it hear for you. When you find it, I hope you know what to do with it, for as I cannot see you, I have no instructions with how to use it. But here I will leave it; the boundaries of my own sight. The things I cannot see. I hope in these boundaries you can find yourself, and know why you are obscured.
*
I cannot see the blind hatred of innocent sadness.
I think I might have started to glimpse it one day, briefly in a lit hall. A traveler faced a piece of a journey that few find welcome. A bend in the road that lead back up a hill. A bend that would make anyone question the path, regardless of the age of the asker.
I saw the traveler clearly, and I saw his question, and then I saw anger. Not from the traveler but from the guide. Anger at the traveler for doubting the path. Anger at the question. Anger at the resistance. And, finally, anger at the innocent sadness of a traveler. A sadness only traveler's can know, but since we are all traveler's, a sadness that should relate to all of us.
That's when I lost them both in the haze of my own blindness.
The anger had become to alien for my eyes, and I could only hear the traveler, wail his begs for forgiveness. Pleading to an angry God. Promising humility in exchange for calm waves and safe return home.
*
I cannot see revenge for perceived future.
Sometimes arrows come from the fog. Found in the air by my senses. Heard and felt. The fog twists and clouds into soft silhouettes, and then the arrows come. The arrows come from the past of an untold future. They come from the plan of someone's mind. A plan built upon a past or present transgression that one wouldn't think has foundation enough to support another's structure. But that structure stands, and is the home of the archers. An unstable and dangerous domicile, yes, but archers being archers, they need not a steady building to fulfill their obligations. Only a platform to lift them to the medium of their art. Over the tree line. Overlooking the glade.
Being unable to catch sight of the towering barracks, the source of malcontent, I simply wait. I wait for the arrows to come from the fog from archers hired, and highered, by the sheriffs of some similar village. And when the arrows strike my body with no armor, I pull them out for a brief fond moment, as I recognize the wood of the shaft, as being from my own forest.
*
I cannot see relinquishment over assumption.
There was a carriage traveling past and I could see the driver. The driver was urgent on the horses, as an escapee would be. But the traveler was alone on the road. There was no other carriage or soul, save what could have passed for a passenger. I say this because I could not see the passenger. Covered by the cloak of the carriage curtains the passenger remained only a possibility, but a probable one.
So, I road up next to the driver and asked why the need. My answer was an increase in speed. And a look. Towards the cabin of this carriage. A cabin that could be concealing a cacogenic cargo. I asked again why the speed and looked ahead of myself to make sure I was still keeping my own way.
When I looked back I could no longer see the driver.
The cloak that so cleverly concealed the cargo was now curiously covering the current captain.
But the driver I could still see. Clearly visible as there was no cloak, no cabin, no where at all for her to lie as the carriage sped along its path.
The driver was being dragged. Caught, by the caballine cabriolet, careening into a canyon of carnificial cacotopia. Claimed at the clambake of her own cataclysmic catachresis.
She was being shredded under wheel for having the assumption that she could simply escape her cargo. Torn to pieces by the dirt and stone sander she, herself, had brought to this fatal speed. Not fully realizing that her speed in no way separated the driver from the passenger, but only made it that much easier for the loss of control the passenger ultimately, and so desperately, yearned for.
*
So, here I have left my clarity, defined by its limits, for those that don't understand why I squint in their direction. My gift to those I truly can't know. Given selfishly so that I may gain more vision for myself, but, intended selflessly so that the collective sight will gain in the big picture.
Maybe after taking my gift, you could give me one of your own. Something given to me selfishly, but, intended to be given selflessly. So, that I can be seen better; perhaps only by myself.
Because if we all understand that we need to see, and we all understand that we need to be seen, and to be seen is to be known and to be known helps us know, maybe, we would try a little harder to be a little clearer. Maybe then those things that are so hard to see will no longer need to be defined, because they won't exist to require definition.
Sincerely,
Chiggie Von Richthofen
Remembered. Recognized. Detected. But hardly seen.
I want you to know that we can all still see, and I being part of we, can also still see. But, I can't still see you. I can't see you because I can't know you because I don't understand you. And since we see to know and knowing is the beginning of understanding, I can't see you.
You are sight unseen and I am seer unsighted and that is something that I cannot stand to stand.
And, that is why I want to give you a gift. You and all the people I have trouble seeing. I wish to make my own world clearer to me by letting those not seen see what I see, and know that trying to know them is like knowing an unknowable.
Like knowing a flame.
You can remember a flame. You can recognize a flame. You can detect a flame. But you can no more know a flame than you can know the past or a god. Just as it is with them whose actions make them detectable in my life and nothing more. And, it is the unknown to what I wish to give the gift of my clarity.
But, how do you give a gift to something that you're not even sure is there? You can't. Giving is from one to another and since I am just one I have to leave, instead of give.
I will take my clarity, a piece of it that I can spare, and I will leave it hear for you. When you find it, I hope you know what to do with it, for as I cannot see you, I have no instructions with how to use it. But here I will leave it; the boundaries of my own sight. The things I cannot see. I hope in these boundaries you can find yourself, and know why you are obscured.
*
I cannot see the blind hatred of innocent sadness.
I think I might have started to glimpse it one day, briefly in a lit hall. A traveler faced a piece of a journey that few find welcome. A bend in the road that lead back up a hill. A bend that would make anyone question the path, regardless of the age of the asker.
I saw the traveler clearly, and I saw his question, and then I saw anger. Not from the traveler but from the guide. Anger at the traveler for doubting the path. Anger at the question. Anger at the resistance. And, finally, anger at the innocent sadness of a traveler. A sadness only traveler's can know, but since we are all traveler's, a sadness that should relate to all of us.
That's when I lost them both in the haze of my own blindness.
The anger had become to alien for my eyes, and I could only hear the traveler, wail his begs for forgiveness. Pleading to an angry God. Promising humility in exchange for calm waves and safe return home.
*
I cannot see revenge for perceived future.
Sometimes arrows come from the fog. Found in the air by my senses. Heard and felt. The fog twists and clouds into soft silhouettes, and then the arrows come. The arrows come from the past of an untold future. They come from the plan of someone's mind. A plan built upon a past or present transgression that one wouldn't think has foundation enough to support another's structure. But that structure stands, and is the home of the archers. An unstable and dangerous domicile, yes, but archers being archers, they need not a steady building to fulfill their obligations. Only a platform to lift them to the medium of their art. Over the tree line. Overlooking the glade.
Being unable to catch sight of the towering barracks, the source of malcontent, I simply wait. I wait for the arrows to come from the fog from archers hired, and highered, by the sheriffs of some similar village. And when the arrows strike my body with no armor, I pull them out for a brief fond moment, as I recognize the wood of the shaft, as being from my own forest.
*
I cannot see relinquishment over assumption.
There was a carriage traveling past and I could see the driver. The driver was urgent on the horses, as an escapee would be. But the traveler was alone on the road. There was no other carriage or soul, save what could have passed for a passenger. I say this because I could not see the passenger. Covered by the cloak of the carriage curtains the passenger remained only a possibility, but a probable one.
So, I road up next to the driver and asked why the need. My answer was an increase in speed. And a look. Towards the cabin of this carriage. A cabin that could be concealing a cacogenic cargo. I asked again why the speed and looked ahead of myself to make sure I was still keeping my own way.
When I looked back I could no longer see the driver.
The cloak that so cleverly concealed the cargo was now curiously covering the current captain.
But the driver I could still see. Clearly visible as there was no cloak, no cabin, no where at all for her to lie as the carriage sped along its path.
The driver was being dragged. Caught, by the caballine cabriolet, careening into a canyon of carnificial cacotopia. Claimed at the clambake of her own cataclysmic catachresis.
She was being shredded under wheel for having the assumption that she could simply escape her cargo. Torn to pieces by the dirt and stone sander she, herself, had brought to this fatal speed. Not fully realizing that her speed in no way separated the driver from the passenger, but only made it that much easier for the loss of control the passenger ultimately, and so desperately, yearned for.
*
So, here I have left my clarity, defined by its limits, for those that don't understand why I squint in their direction. My gift to those I truly can't know. Given selfishly so that I may gain more vision for myself, but, intended selflessly so that the collective sight will gain in the big picture.
Maybe after taking my gift, you could give me one of your own. Something given to me selfishly, but, intended to be given selflessly. So, that I can be seen better; perhaps only by myself.
Because if we all understand that we need to see, and we all understand that we need to be seen, and to be seen is to be known and to be known helps us know, maybe, we would try a little harder to be a little clearer. Maybe then those things that are so hard to see will no longer need to be defined, because they won't exist to require definition.
Sincerely,
Chiggie Von Richthofen
Remembered. Recognized. Detected. But hardly seen.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
A Letter To An Animal Concerning Its Greater Role In My Universe
Hey, everybody. How are you doing? Good?
Lately, I've had the bug for letter writing, and, on a regular day that would mean that I have been getting my last nerved stomped on by an army of country line dancers. But, today, I just want to write about something.
I just want to take a thought, a conviction, and send it to someone or something just for the sake of expression. I'm not really angry. I'm not feeling vindictive or persecuted. I'm in a rare form today. One that I usually try to hold on to with both hands and keep tight to my chest until the sun punches out and the moon takes up the sentry.
I'm in a good calm mood. The kind of mood a snow bordered brook brings in the stillness of a winter wood. The kind of calm the clouds bring when they fill every inch of your peripheral vision as you stare up from the reclining position on your front lawn after wrestling the mower under that last thorn bush.
I'm just happy, and I want to record it for posterity. Because, just like the rare beasts of the world we call Earth, happiness is not something to be captured and bread in captivity. It's better to just set up your cameras, wait, and record, for the shared experience of everyone to come later and see what you saw.
So, without further ado, I bring you, my first earnest, honest, and benign Letter to The Internet.
Dear spirit animal of my road to work,
I noticed you again today, walking along Buncombe Road with your sleek black fur still shiny as the day you were born. How old could you maybe be now? 2? 3? You look my dog's age, so I think it's a pretty safe approximation.
As always you were walking towards my oncoming car. Not directly at me, but off to the side, in the grass, casually trotting the opposite direction I was heading so determinedly. You noticed me, but not like I notice you. You glanced and sniffed and meandered off further down the incline of the ditch to make sure our paths wouldn't intersect.
And then I was gone from your day. As you so often aren't gone from mine.
I wonder about you, animal. I wonder how someone so stray could stay so fit and comfortable with their day to day.
I suppose there are no mortgages in the spirit kingdom. There are no 99 cent menus or fine print on contacts. Your day is the day that I would be having thousands of years in the past. Your day is the day we shared before my kind decided there were better things. You kept your appointment, and still do, as your kind is the kind that keeps their promises.
I've noticed you many places around my home and wondered where it is that you live. I didn't realize that I had already answered my own question.
You live where I see you. You live where I don't see you. My home is your home, but your home is not mine.
You've seen me many places, around my home, but still in yours, and maybe you've wondered why I go so fast, when in your eyes my origination and destination are one in the same. You watch my car whoosh by, traveling from your train tracks to your field like I watch the bees that fly from my flowers into my trees.
I think about how they live their lives in my back yard, as I live my life in yours.
I'm glad you were there this morning, animal. It always makes me question my actions when I see you. It makes that part of me that is sure die, and lets the uncertain offspring grow fat on its body.
So, animal, I'm always glad to see you.
But, I dare not do more than see. I dare not name, or feed, or attempt capture. Because names and food and fences mean that you are not a spirit animal. They mean that you are a dog, like my dog now, and my dog before. And you can't be a dog. Dogs are mortal and dogs are seekers of guidance.
And you are neither.
You are the spirit animal of my road to work. And, if one morning I see that a car has struck you from my road to work, I will know that is because you kept your appointment, and I wasn't there.
I will know that your body's death will be an ultimate reflection of my failure, as your life has been an ultimate reflection of my desire to turn around and casually walk the other way.
But you will not die from the blow. Your body will remain in your old home, but you will not die. And when I move, I will look for you on my new road to work. I will try to subvert my ignorance and my impatience and I will try to find you, spirit animal, so that I may see you again.
But dare not do anything more than see.
Sincerely,
Chiggie Von Richthofen
Your faithful follower, always traveling in the opposite direction
Lately, I've had the bug for letter writing, and, on a regular day that would mean that I have been getting my last nerved stomped on by an army of country line dancers. But, today, I just want to write about something.
I just want to take a thought, a conviction, and send it to someone or something just for the sake of expression. I'm not really angry. I'm not feeling vindictive or persecuted. I'm in a rare form today. One that I usually try to hold on to with both hands and keep tight to my chest until the sun punches out and the moon takes up the sentry.
I'm in a good calm mood. The kind of mood a snow bordered brook brings in the stillness of a winter wood. The kind of calm the clouds bring when they fill every inch of your peripheral vision as you stare up from the reclining position on your front lawn after wrestling the mower under that last thorn bush.
I'm just happy, and I want to record it for posterity. Because, just like the rare beasts of the world we call Earth, happiness is not something to be captured and bread in captivity. It's better to just set up your cameras, wait, and record, for the shared experience of everyone to come later and see what you saw.
So, without further ado, I bring you, my first earnest, honest, and benign Letter to The Internet.
Dear spirit animal of my road to work,
I noticed you again today, walking along Buncombe Road with your sleek black fur still shiny as the day you were born. How old could you maybe be now? 2? 3? You look my dog's age, so I think it's a pretty safe approximation.
As always you were walking towards my oncoming car. Not directly at me, but off to the side, in the grass, casually trotting the opposite direction I was heading so determinedly. You noticed me, but not like I notice you. You glanced and sniffed and meandered off further down the incline of the ditch to make sure our paths wouldn't intersect.
And then I was gone from your day. As you so often aren't gone from mine.
I wonder about you, animal. I wonder how someone so stray could stay so fit and comfortable with their day to day.
I suppose there are no mortgages in the spirit kingdom. There are no 99 cent menus or fine print on contacts. Your day is the day that I would be having thousands of years in the past. Your day is the day we shared before my kind decided there were better things. You kept your appointment, and still do, as your kind is the kind that keeps their promises.
I've noticed you many places around my home and wondered where it is that you live. I didn't realize that I had already answered my own question.
You live where I see you. You live where I don't see you. My home is your home, but your home is not mine.
You've seen me many places, around my home, but still in yours, and maybe you've wondered why I go so fast, when in your eyes my origination and destination are one in the same. You watch my car whoosh by, traveling from your train tracks to your field like I watch the bees that fly from my flowers into my trees.
I think about how they live their lives in my back yard, as I live my life in yours.
I'm glad you were there this morning, animal. It always makes me question my actions when I see you. It makes that part of me that is sure die, and lets the uncertain offspring grow fat on its body.
So, animal, I'm always glad to see you.
But, I dare not do more than see. I dare not name, or feed, or attempt capture. Because names and food and fences mean that you are not a spirit animal. They mean that you are a dog, like my dog now, and my dog before. And you can't be a dog. Dogs are mortal and dogs are seekers of guidance.
And you are neither.
You are the spirit animal of my road to work. And, if one morning I see that a car has struck you from my road to work, I will know that is because you kept your appointment, and I wasn't there.
I will know that your body's death will be an ultimate reflection of my failure, as your life has been an ultimate reflection of my desire to turn around and casually walk the other way.
But you will not die from the blow. Your body will remain in your old home, but you will not die. And when I move, I will look for you on my new road to work. I will try to subvert my ignorance and my impatience and I will try to find you, spirit animal, so that I may see you again.
But dare not do anything more than see.
Sincerely,
Chiggie Von Richthofen
Your faithful follower, always traveling in the opposite direction
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